


What Can Be Had

by orphan_account



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: F/M, Flashbacks, M/M, Marriage, Post-Series, Pre-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Corambis, Kay talks with Felix. Before the events of Corambis, Murtagh talked with Isobel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Can Be Had

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosekay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosekay/gifts).



> I tried to be as creative as possible with your prompt, and I hope I provided something fun in the process! Have a good Yuletide.

Once, Kay had been woken every morning by sunlight streaming brightly in his face, warming the world into orange smudges until he opened his eyes. He'd thought nature, in its unpredictable mercy, had put a stop to such practice when the Lady had given Kay his blindness, but no, now Kay woke every morning his face too warm to sleep any longer. A seeing man, he'd not noticed the warmth; a blind one, there was nothing but.

But there is some mercy left in the world: Kay wakes to an empty bed. Vanessa hews to Corambin fashion on these matters, and husband and wife have separate beds in separate rooms in separate wings of their home. Vanessa's wing is a perfumed thing, all plush carpets underfoot and smooth marble. When asked how his room would be furnished, Kay had grunted, and Vanessa had whispered: "efficiently." 

Kay is brought back from this recollection to hear a gentle rapping at his door. Presumably, it's March, his maidservant. He whistles him in, in the Craloxan custom that poor March has been trained into. Kay hears a quiet, muffled voice on the other side of the door. "You decent?"

Kay frowns for no one to see. "Mildmay?"

"Yeah." The doors creak to open, and Kay sits up in bed. Mildmay continues, "March caught that cough that's been going 'round, he ' _prithee_ 'd me to get you to your breakfast on time, or there'd be a fit pitched." 

Kay snorts like an old racehorse, his concession to laughter. There's the breath of silence one is often given in Mildmay's presence; Kay assumes it's some visual gesture, like a shrug or a heavenward roll of the eyes. 

Mildmay says, "anyway, I said I'd get to it." Which is to say, _here I am_. 

"March is one to pick my clothing, but don't have any official business today."

"Ain't much for leaving the castle?"

"No need." Kay stands, and feels Mildmay's hands, gentle and huge, on his shoulders. 

Kay can stand on his own, but he feels Mildmay push Jashuki into his hands anyway. Kay is careful not to lean on it. He listens for the sounds of Mildmay dragging some of his clothing out of his wardrobe, laying it out, and feels Mildmay's hands helping him into them. It's slow going-- Mildmay has none of the training March has, nor breeding-- but it's done with care, and a minimum of bumbling. Mildmay is always very sure in his movements. It is an admirable trait, one Kay misses in himself. He is all caution, now.

Mildmay's hands are not soft, but they are warm. Kay remembers a time he would have burned for this, but it has been a year, and Kay is not one to wish for the impossible for so long as that. One must take what can be had.

Mildmay takes Jashuki back, and leads him arm-in-arm like a bridegroom down to the alter. Instead, they travel down the twisting halls of Kay's home. "Watch your step," Mildmay mutters, "I mean- there's one. There."

There is indeed. Kay stumbles, miscalculating the distance, and Mildmay catches him. They right themselves, and keep walking toward the smell of food. 

"Y'know," Mildmay says, "I been talking to Grovesy, that tinker Miss Vanessa knows." 

Grovesy is employed in another arcane Corambin custom: tinkering, or, a professional vagabond renown for his-- for it is always a man, or a woman disguised as one, all the safer to travel the roads that way-- skill with nearly everything he can set his hands to. For bread and housing, a tinker will fix your boots when the roads are snowed and you can't get to the shoemaker. It's cheap work, but always convenient, and a good tinker will invent the odd job to accomplish before their customer will know it's needed. Grovesy, it seems, is one of the latter.

"Have you, now?" Kay can hear the suspicion in his voice. Mildmay is not one much for idle chatter, much less bragging about conversations past.

"Yeah," Mildmay says, "I have." His accent melds the two words together into a single word, _iyav_. "He says he known blind folk," Mildmay is never one to mince words, being so sparse with them to begin with, "he could set something up for you. String."

"String?" Kay says.

"Yeah. Long the walls, you could hold and walk. You could knot it, when you got near stairs and slopes, so you know what's coming."

Kay would prefer not to deface his home with murals to his need. He is silent until they reach the dining tables, and Mildmay, a creature of silence, complies.

\---

The Duke of Murtagh is not a young man any longer, but he's not quite yet old, he thinks. That is surely the perfect age to enter into a marriage. He supports a cause, and makes a match, all benefiting his aims, all without meeting the bride. Her head of house is at war, the Cougar of Rothmarlin fighting in the stinking marshes during the summer of their correspondence. It's the sort of thing that would have plain horrified him, as a young boy, when he thought marriage was all romance. But he has a portrait of Isobel Brightmore. That is enough for romance, now.

He wonders what sort of girls a father such as Kay Brightmore's could rear, and, a week before their marriage, he finds out. Severe girls. No, women. Very severe women.

Isobel is not ugly, thank the Lady, but her beauty is strange. Her face a series of flat lines, from her small eyes to the line of her nose to the strained frown on her thin lips. Her dress is cut to match, restrained as her expression. She looks at him with hatred barely kept back, and for that, Murtagh can love her. 

"My lady," he says, and, all charm, kisses her hand. 

Her expression is one of disgust and boredom. "My lord," she says, with a voice like the kind corpses don't have. Murtagh finds her delightful. 

It's her brother that's the problem. Isobel will plainly be the sort of wife Murtagh could not have dreamed for: if not happy, perhaps she can be moved there, but most important, she will be quiet and dutiful. And she is beautiful, in her own strange way. Kay Brightmore, his beauty is different, shining out of him at every angle. Where Isobel keeps her beauty caged, Kay, seemingly unaware of his, lets it shimmer all around him.

It's a terrible torture, but Murtagh imagines Isobel will make a better wife than Kay. The one he's chosen is far more likely to produce an heir.

After dinner, Isobel is sent to her new rooms by a lady-in-waiting not of her choosing. Eloise is all smiles and bubbly giggles, the kind Murtagh, to his rather obvious folly, thought a woman would like as a companion. He did not expect a woman like Isobel. Murtagh wonders if he'll find Eloise strangled in the morning. No, Murtagh thinks: Isobel is a subtle woman, it will be poisoning if it's anything. From the look Isobel gives Eloise as they walk up the stairs, Eloise giggling about Isobel's impending wedding night, Isobel is clearly considering some species of murder. 

Murtagh chuckles as she goes.

"Told you, she is not a kindly woman," Kay says. He's sitting in the chair opposite Murtagh's, staring into the fire to his left. The orange glow of the fire lights his face in the most distracting fashion, and Murtagh feels like a much younger bridegroom, itching for a wedding night with _one_ of them, surely.

He does his best to show none of that to Kay. If he is reticent, he imagines it will be chalked up to a marriage, impending, to a woman whose demeanor is cold enough to freeze any man alive that tries to couple with her. 

So instead, he shrugs and smiles, all charm again. Kay rolls his eyes.

"And I said I would not care either way." Murtagh sips his sherry. "She will make an excellent wife, for plainly she is polite and obedient."

This gets something like a laugh out of Kay, though, from Kay's warrior's lungs, it sounds more like a cough, gruff and tired. "She is not happy with the match."

"Will she warm?" Murtagh asks, and is surprised to find that he cares. 

"No," Kay says. "Was not happy with my birth, and never warmed to that, either."

Murtagh isn't sure if this is a joke or the truth. He laughs anyway.

\---

The next morning, there is another knock at Kay's door. Kay is already awake; the seasons change, and the sun rises earlier and earlier, but it finds Kay's face each and every time. "Mildmay?"

"I'm afraid not." The voice has that strange tilting accent, all languors and stretched vowels. The expressions of one playing at idle gentry. Felix. The door creeks, and opens. "I fear I've been pressed into service. Mildmay has the most awful cold. I believe he caught it from your valet."

"Maidservant," Kay says. He sits up all the same. "The Corambins call them maidservants."

"Ah, yes," Felix says. From the sound of his voice, and its echoes, Kay assumes he's leaning on the windowsill, trying to arrange himself for the painting he commissioned in his head. "I forgot how deeply you care for Corambin nomenclature."

Kay was born with a limited amount of patience to indulge, and precious little of it goes toward sarcasm. He attempts an incredulous expression. "Lord Wizard, are you here to dress me."

"You may not have noticed, Lord Cougar, but half your staff is down with some sort of cough." There is that reedy tone Kay recognizes well, pulled out when Felix wants to hide his concern behind a veneer of boredom. He is worried for Mildmay, but he'll be personally damned before letting any of it on, even to one, Kay hopes, who could be considered a friend. "So I must debase myself. It's all very ironic."

Kay lets himself laugh, a small little cough of a thing. "Yes, very droll."

"The- the _prostitute_ ," there is special emphasis there, where Felix takes care-- Kay assumes-- not to use some other word for his past profession, "now dressing clients. I've got it backward entirely." He sighs dramatically, almost a swoon.

As a reward for such brevity, Kay lets himself laugh again, that same hushed little noise.

"Pray you do not dress me in unearned finery," Kay says. "Mildmay has told me of your tastes in color."

"I assure you, I shall leave your delicate sartorial sensibilities unharmed." 

"One had best." And now, it seems, it's Kay's turn for brevity, "is a capitol sin, to deceive the blind."

Kay stands, and feels Felix's hands on him, moving him into place. Felix's hands are smaller, less clever, less warm, less gentle. They poke and prod, clumsy and graceless. Kay takes this as a sign of familiarity between them, for Felix can certainly be as clever and gentle as is needed. But it's not his nature.

Felix, concentrated on the endless proliferation of buttons that Corambin fashion demands, mutters when he speaks, affectation lost. His accent is still nothing like his brother's, but it's no longer straining for such finery as rolled consonants and elongated vowels. "It's also a sin," he says in that more casual tone, "to refuse help when it's needed."

"Was not aware you were a scholar on catechism, Felix."

Felix _tsks_. "Don't change the subject."

"Ironic."

"What?"

"What you said, earlier. Very ironic."

"Oh-" Felix does not curse, as a matter of principle. But he does, occasionally, come very close. Absurdly, Kay feels a blush of pride for managing this feat. Felix continues, "Mildmay does really want to build that... string contraption. For your sake."

"An I, a free Craloxa. Cannot all have what we wish, Felix."

"Yes, yes," Felix's hands, if possible, become less gentle as they argue; Kay is forced very roughly into his waistcoat and stockings, respectively. "Because military campaign is precisely the same as tying a length of rope to a wall."

"Do not act as though you would care to ask, in the normal way of things," Kay says, quite aware he's saying too much, but irked readily by nursemaiding, "only, because your brother is ill..."

Kay feels Felix's hands leave him very quickly, as if he's been burned. Felix does not like to be understood, preferring to think himself mystery incarnate. His hissed reply, too cruel by half, is like a cat clawing out after a wound. "Better that than concern for _you_." Floorboard's squeak under Felix's heel as he steps back. "I know a lost cause."

"One would, very well," Kay says, and hears his reply: the slamming of a door, and Felix's angry footsteps down the hall. 

And Kay is left wondering at the intelligence of this strategy, left half-dressed and alone in his bedroom.

\---

As is Corambin custom, Murtagh sneaks into Isobel's room the night before the wedding. As is apparently Craloxan custom, he is welcomed to the sight of Kay sitting at his sister's bed, and, in a variation on both themes, a punch in the nose.

An awful few minutes later, Murtagh is holding a rag to his bleeding face, and speaking on the delicate subject of cultural differences. "I wasn't going to _ravish_ her-"

Isobel puts her head in her hands, more disappointment than despair. That hurts nearly as much as his nose.

"It's- it's custom, you know, you sneak out to see the _blushing_ bride-"

Isobel looks as though she's going to strike him.

"And give her a kiss. Nothing _untoward_."

Kay is sitting, hunched over, on the fainting couch at the edge of Isobel's bed. Isobel sits, still as taxidermy, in her thin nightgown. Between them, Murtagh sits in one of the spare chairs. Isobel has not said a word. Murtagh longs for her voice again. Or for all three of them to crawl into the bed together. But he'll take what can be had. 

"Can you forgive me, wife?"

"I am not your wife," Isobel says, with the practiced grace of someone who has studied to loose their accent. "Yet."

Kay ignores them. "An Craloxan custom, for the father to sit at his daughter's bed." But his father is dead, so the chore falls to Kay. It's all very neat, really.

"And warn off rogues and scandals, yes, yes. I'd heard of the custom, but I'd _also_ heard it was _outdated_."

"We are a traditional family." Isobel, upon seeing her future husband bloodied, is condescending to speak to him before the wedding night, while dressed only in her nightgown, which leaves little to the imagination. This is scandal by Corambin custom, but, as Murtagh has just been abundantly reminded, Isobel is no Corambin maid. She looked upon the blood dispassionately, not rising from her bed once, nor crying out, nor swooning. She is just as formidable as her brother, though Murtagh suspects her weapons are hidden elsewhere.

Murtagh looks forward to finding them.

"Well," he says, and stands. He feels a bit dizzy, and meditates on the strength of Kay's punch. Perhaps Isobel is the preferable choice, after all. Murtagh walks over to her bedside, and Kay stands, silent and gruff in his corner of the room. "No, no," Murtagh says. "Nothing untoward, I said. Just a kiss."

Isobel, still sitting straight-backed on her bed, raises a single eyebrow. "No," she says. 

"It's bad luck," Murtagh says. 

Isobel, it seems, is willing to compromise. He raises one hand, a dainty little thing to contrast Kay's strong calloused fingers. 

"No," Murtagh says, trying to press his luck further. "On the face, at least. Anything else is poor portents, bad luck, a cold marriage."

In the corner, Kay scoffs. Isobel, ever diplomatic, ignores him. "I intend to work at the strength of our marriage, not rely on _luck_ , husband."

Beaten at his own gambit, Murtagh takes Isobel's hand in his, and takes what can be had.

\---

Kay tries to find his way in the darkness.

It is, of course, morning, and he can feel the warmth streaming in through the large windows Vanessa favors. Are they painted, like in Craloxan houses? More pressingly, is Kay about to fall down a flight of stairs? He moves slowly, cautiously, and follows the smell of food. Evidently, it leads him in the wrong direction, for while his sight is gone, his time-sense is not; this is taking far longer than it should.

Kay would like a length of rope, he thinks, but for his foolishness, he'd likely hang himself with it out of spite.

It is on these cheery matters Kay is thinking when he missteps, and finds himself hurtling through darkness. There is a shout, a voice, and Kay feels hands holding him close. In a moment of great weakness, Kay grabs at them, and ends up with handfuls of crushed velvet.

Felix.

He pauses, stewing in his embarrassment, and is proven a coward when Felix speaks first. "Well," he says, "how awkward."

Kay coughs. "Am suitably humbled."

"Really?" Felix says, his tilting accent returned. It's gotten worse, since he left his home country; Kay assumes Felix feels the need to compensate, while his brother picks up gutter Corambin like a sponge. So Felix goes, in that accent laundered from the idle rich. "I think you could survive a more through humbling." It appears Kay has not been forgiven. Just so; he doesn't deserve one just yet.

"Were that my mind a more sullied thing..." Kay mutters, and stands back. 

"Yes, that did sound like a proposition, didn't it?" Felix coughs. "Don't flatter yourself."

"No," Kay says, and gathers his shame about him for the next step: "I'll humble. Am sorry, Felix."

Felix snorts.

"Am an awful, bitter old man, rude and horrible... ugly... disagreeable... art thou quite satisfied?"

This manages to get Felix's attention: he is silent, a singular rarity. It's impossible to know if it's for good or ill. Not for the first time, Kay wonders why he seeks friendship with this man, when he is quite disagreeable himself, certainly bitter, and often horrible. 

Kay sighs. Perhaps it's vanity.

"Not ugly." Felix says, and realizes, presumably, that he's spoken in an incomplete sentence. "Well, not _very_ ugly."

"Am to understand ugly men are hard to forgive," Kay says.

Felix laughs, a quiet little thing, rueful. Kay appreciates it regardless; he doesn't think he can humble himself much more, this morning. "You're making it far too easy," Felix says. "My behavior wasn't particularly flattering, either. I believe we're both at fault." A pause, long enough for a sigh badly restrained. "I _am_ sorry."

A year ago, Felix would never have lowered himself so. He's not always so kind, but he is faster to forgive. More obviously frayed around the edges, fine fabric be damned.

Kay is grateful. It makes this part easier: "We both are." 

"Yes. Sorry and handsome." The tilting accent is gone, replaced with its more casual cousin. Kay has been forgiven. 

"Suppose I am the only one humble, then." Kay offers his arm, and feels himself being lead toward the center of the hall, away from the wall and the stairs, toward the kitchens. 

Felix scoffs "Of course not, darling, I haven't the time." There is a silence, but Felix never does well with silences; he ends it. "You know, you are the most impenetrable man- oh, I suppose that's another innuendo. Well, I _was_ trying to compliment you, I suppose it's fitting."

"Calling a blind man handsome... perhaps not the best tactic," Kay says, attempting diplomacy. Isn't that what retired soldiers do?

Felix snorts. Kay imagines he does it with a wistful, careless air. He's seen the like before, in taverns and violet gardens. "Well, I live in hope. Really, I haven't a clue how to go about things-- were you seeing, I'd have this done, by now."

Kay doubts that. He also suspects the conversation has turned in a strange, unexpected direction-- but he'll withhold speculation. At worst, it means it's Felix's turn to humble himself. So he speaks without emotion: "I don't follow you."

"I'd say you do," Felix tugs gently at Kay's arm. They keep walking. "I mean, we are both unattached, and..."

"And?"

Apparently, Felix's patience for humility has worn out. He groans. "Never mind."

"Mayhap you get me to breakfast, first,"

"You got yourself quite lost, it's hardly my fault we're taking _some_ time, and I'm left watching you fend off romantic advances like some eunuch-"

"After breakfast," Kay says, and pats Felix's wrist. "Haven't the energy for this conversation otherwise."

"Just answer me yes or no, I'm not _accustomed_ to this sort of _stalling_ -" 

"After breakfast."

Felix's groan echoes through the hall.


End file.
